Via Axis contemporary art website, following OCA video of Sheila MacGregor:I love this sculptural textile piece by Marilyn Rathbone ‘100 metres dash’. She hand braided the silk which looks like a shoe lace and has dashes all along its 100 metre length. The reel and label make me feel nostalgic for haberdashery stores (although the length would have been in yards). I can almost feel the patience of the task wound onto that reel but despite the measurements given I can’t really get my head around the scale. http://www.axisweb.org/seCVPG.aspx?ARTISTID=12675
William
Heath Robinson 1872-1944
To
be honest I had no idea that the term ‘Heath Robinson’ in respect to
inefficient or ludicrous contraptions was actually the name of an illustrator
(or four illustrators if you count Will’s father, a wood engraver, and his two
older brothers) who drew such machines.
I’ve
found his biography (by James Hamilton, Pavilion Books), in the house I’m staying
in, and am impressed and enchanted more by his drawing skills and the range of
his style than by his humour. Interesting to read how he was put off his
original dream of being a landscape painter by a dismissive art dealer and how
his utter determination to be a successful illustrator paid off in the end.
Also
interesting to see how his early pen and ink illustrations were influenced by
woodcut techniques
eg The Arabian Nights Entertainments 1899
And
how they then were influenced by Aubrey Beardsley
eg
The Night’s Plutonian shore 1900 Poe Poems
His
use of watercolour with pen and without is exquisite
eg
In ‘Follow after- we are waiting by the trails that we lost’ from A Song of the
English from 1909
he
uses a similarly muted palette to ‘Blasting Limpets on the Barbary Coast’ 1906
but
the tone is totally different. The former being sad and ethereal and the latter
comical.
I
love the detail and the muted palette in ‘Farmyard and Barns’ painted in
the1920’s.
Shown at 4:11 of this lovely little film about him at http://wn.com/William_Heath
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